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Steve had never seen himself going to prison. For some reason he'd thought that doing the right thing had been some kind of shield he could throw around to protect himself. It's not even that he'd wanted to avoid consequence so much as that he'd never thought through exactly how far the right thing and the law might stray from each other.

None of that really matters, anyway, because the trial is over and Steve is looking at a minimum of two years in minimum security prison. This is his life for the next two years. It puts college on hold and it may stick with him for the rest of his life and he still doesn't think he did a damn thing wrong, but that doesn't make the prospect of being in prison any less daunting. His sentence would have been worse if the judge hadn't had a soft spot for veterans, too. Steve had hated letting his lawyer play that card, but he hadn't had much of a choice.

He's got muscles, at least. As he's going through the intake process, he notices most of the men are smaller than him and a few of them eye him warily. He says nothing to anyone unless he's supposed to, leaving the chatter to a skinny man with a face tattoo and whoever he can manage to pull answers from.

There's a pile of clothes and sheets and toiletries in his arms and as they're led in, the group is split up among the blocks. Steve is in C block, he's told, and his cell mate will be a man named Barnes. It all means nothing to Steve, but he remembers the details, anyway. Everything looks the same in here and he wonders what kind of criminal he'll be sharing a cell with. Enough of the men in here come from unwinnable situations. It's not something Steve would look down his nose at. His neighborhood wasn't exactly a safe suburban haven, either, and he could have easily fallen in with a bad crowd or made the wrong decision and wound up in their shoes. He doesn't let himself forget that. Most of them are minor drug offenders or small time thieves, maybe a few bigger offenders moved here for years of good behavior.

When he finally gets to his cell, the top bunk is made and there are a few personal items strewn about. Steve puts his pile on the bottom bunk and starts to unfold his bedding. He resists the urge to dig through Barnes' things to learn more about him.

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Steve is let out before Bucky and he isn't sure if that means Bucky will be out soon, too, or if it means he's leaving Bucky alone to suffer. Being able to talk really had helped a lot. Steve tends to suffer silently, but being left alone with nothing but his thoughts for days at a time isn't exactly his idea of a good time, anyway.

He notices the looks he's getting and he doesn't like it, but he goes along with whatever seems to be seen in him now. If people are afraid of him, he won't abuse that, but he'll be happy to take the space it provides him. There are plenty of people here who he really wouldn't mind being left alone by. Besides, maybe that will help keep Bucky safe for a while, too.

In the cafeteria, he gets a seat with Wilson and a few of the others and they joke about his time in SHU and for a moment he almost forgets to worry about Bucky. Then he looks up and Bucky is there across the room.

Steve can't even help the little smile on his face. He can't remember the last time he'd felt close to someone like that. He knows he's being an idiot. Bucky is attractive and funny and sharp and so very much Steve's type, but Steve knows Bucky probably wouldn't even speak to him outside of prison, let alone be interested in him. Yet Steve already knows that if he was given half a chance just to hook up with Bucky, he'd give the guy service with a smile.

He is so fucked.

After a few minutes, he realizes Bucky's taking an oddly long time to get food, but when he looks around (oblivious to what Sam's telling him), he spots Bucky eating at another table. It seems a little odd for him not to sit with them, but then Steve hasn't been here that long and he doesn't want to ask Sam and draw attention to it in case something is going on, so he holds his tongue and nods along to Sam's story. Any other day and he knows he would have been listening like it was the greatest story in the world, but now he just needs to find a moment alone with Bucky.

Did something happen while they were separated? Did someone threaten him?

The rest of the afternoon, he can't seem to pin Bucky down. He catches sight a few times, but between the other guys pulling his attention, he can't seem to catch up until he makes it back to their cell for lights out.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were avoiding me." Subtlety has never been Steve's thing.

Sam, by now, is more or less familiar with Bucky's habits. It's out of character enough that even he's got an eyebrow arched, but Bucky's prone to the occasional bout of moodiness and it's easy to chalk this up to that. Especially considering he's just gotten out of solitary confinement, and Sam doesn't know that his time spent there was anything less than a chore.

He spends the rest of the day dodging in odd places; back of the library, smoking side of the yard, anywhere Steve isn't just to force some space between them for a while. Obviously that can't last, not when they share a cell, but any time he can get to put some distance and perspective into this he gladly takes.

He's almost expecting it to go unnoticed, too, but Steve is Steve and he wastes no time with the commentary. He's already on the top bunk by the time Steve arrives, book in hand and glancing over the top of it. God, you attractive son of a bitch.

"Good thing you know better," Barnes comments, a touch wryly because it's easier to play it off that way.

"Yeah." Steve can't quite manage to keep the disappointment from his voice. He's not a good liar and frankly, he doesn't want to be one. "Good thing."

He sits heavily on his own bed and his weight shakes the bunk above him a little. It can't be helped on these rickety beds, but it's not like Steve tries to prevent it, either. For such a large guy, he's usually pretty in control of his weight and it usually doesn't shake Bucky's bunk quite so much.

Really, Steve doesn't know what to think. He's not even sure what he expected. He reaches for his own book, opening it in his lap and staring at the page without reading it.

He'd thought--

He's an idiot. It doesn't matter what he'd thought. Obviously whatever had happened between them through that grate had been a lot more to Steve than it had been to Bucky. Maybe Bucky had just latched on to stay sane, but Steve had felt connected to him in a way that had felt like more than just some momentary consequence of circumstance.

Leaning against the wall, he tips his head back and looks up at the springs under Bucky's mattress. They'd been just as close before, but somehow the mattress feels like a hell of a lot more of a distance than a cement wall had just 24 hours ago.

Fuck.

He catches it. The disappointment that laces Steve's tone is almost as bad as the look on his face, and it shoots straight to Bucky's core in a heartbeat. He's an asshole for doing this, he knows it. An asshole for making Steve feel like that, he's being a bad friend, he knows it. He grits his teeth when Steve's mass jostles the entire damn bed frame, glaring up at the ceiling wordlessly like somehow it's personally to blame.

What's worse, though? That's what he's gotta decide. Is it worse to leave Steve feeling like he did nothing wrong but for whatever reason Bucky's decided they can't be BFFs anymore?

Or is it worse to keep it up, ride out the intensity, let himself go lax, start flirting, make a pass, get shot down two, three times before he ultimately lays it out there flat. Look like an idiot. Put Steve in the awkward position where he's gotta let Bucky down gentle - because he would, wouldn't he? he'd be real kind about it - and then leave Steve feeling awkward in his own god damn bed knowing the guy above him wants to sleep with him.

Living with that every night.
Maybe wondering if he's gotta start looking out for himself in case Bucky-
This is prison. It's not a hard conclusion to jump to.

Maybe just in Bucky's mind. Spiraling out, going too deep. Thinking too hard, too dark, too much.

The first option's the lesser of two evils, and so he keeps his damn mouth shut. The lights go out. He rolls on his side, and the night passes in awkward sleepless silence.

And he intends on doing it again tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next week, until whenever the feeling passes and he can be around Steve without his heart doing cartwheels.

Eventually, Steve gives up on pretending to read. He closes the beat up paperback and bends to drop it gently on the cold cement floor next to the bed before shifting around to slip under his scratchy grey blanket.

When he moves, it's slow and careful. For all that he was throwing his weight around earlier, now he's moving with almost impossible care not to disturb the top bunk. He tells himself he's just being polite because Bucky hasn't moved in a while, but if he's honest it's more about not wanting to hear what else Bucky might have to say, but that's silly, because clearly Bucky doesn't want to say anything.

The thing is that Steve's not sure what to expect. If he was still in the army, he'd just press the issue until he could figure it out, but this isn't the army. They're in prison and Steve really doesn't know what Bucky's capable of, much as he'd started to think they understood each other.

Even with this, Steve doesn't regret standing up against those thugs. He'd do it all over again, because he's not about to let some rich bully come in and push anyone around, even if they're a fickle jackass.

An attractive fickle jackass.

Steve sighs loudly.

It's going to be a long night.

It's an incredibly long night. Bucky's out in the morning before Steve even wakes up, and just like the day before he's virtually impossible to pin down until it's time for light's out. He pretends to be asleep long before he actually sleeps, and it's through this method that he manages to dodge Steve for the next three days.

All the way up until they're put on shower duty together. It's a rotational, randomly assigned chore. Not exactly a difficult one, but time consuming as hell. Scrubbing them down, cleaning toilets, replacing safety liners on the shower hooks. It's three or four hours of being in the same room at the same time, no dodging, no excuses, just the painfully awkward silence Bucky can feel creeping up his spine within the first five god damn minutes.

He does his best to ignore it, but even from his hands and knees with a scrub brush in his palm he's keenly aware of every damn shift Steve makes in the stall next to his.

Steve isn't the giving up type, even when common sense might dictate otherwise, so while he doesn't go hunting Bucky down every day, he's still watching him, still looking for opportunities to get answers, but Bucky's really not giving him any.

By the time they're given shower duty together, Steve has dealt with three days of his cellmate stonewalling him and he's at a loss as to how he can fix it. It's almost 45 minutes of scrubbing before he sighs in the stall and falls back into a seated position, glancing at the partition between them.

"So are you ever planning to tell me what I did?"

It's just the two of them in here. At this point, what does he have to lose? It's the most awake and together they've been in days.

The question floods him with an immediate discomfort, a swelling guilt in his chest and his throat. The sound of his brush rustling across the tile stops, and the room goes a bit silent for a couple seconds.

And then he sighs low and quiet, and answers with a monotone sounding, "You didn't do anything."

Resumes scrubbing, rhythmic back and forth, not holding his breath that it'll be the end of that conversation. It feels like such a god damn cop out though, it feels like a whole lot of nothing, that even Bucky's frustrated with his own god damn answer. He pauses for another second to add, "It's just me. I have... stuff."

Going on.

Stuff, Lori.
Thangs.

That's... well, it's certainly an answer. Or rather it's some words masquerading as one and Steve's gut reaction is to immediately call bullshit, except--

"Bucky, did someone threaten you? Did they threaten your sister?" That's it, right? The explanation for what could get a man to go from hot to cold like a switch was flipped. What's Bucky's top priority? What could understandably trump anything else?

The problem is that Steve can't sit back and let Bucky face trouble like that by himself, so if he's facing it, Steve is facing it with him. There's a whole narrative building in his head, because Steve can't quite outgrow those principals no matter how much the world slaps him in the mouth for having them.

A puff of breath escapes him and gets swallowed by the shower tile; something that isn't a laugh if only because it's lacking real humor. His heart gives a lurch, a sudden stop and double-time in his chest. He'd have to go and do that, wouldn't he? Have to jump straight to conclusions that involve concern, giving a shit, involve bringing up things that matter like really cares.

The scrubbing stops again. Barnes licks his lips, considering, sifting through possible explanations that vary between truth and outright lie. The closer to the former he gets, the harder it feels like it is to breathe. Probably not the bleach.

"No, Steve, it's not..." He starts, slow and measured, just a touch discernibly apologetic. Suddenly really damn glad they're separated by a partition and he can't see Steve's face. "It's not that, it's... I'm tryin' to work something out, is all."

The thing is that Steve really doesn't get it. Whatever it is, he doesn't have enough to go on to even begin to guess. He hates feeling so out of control. How is he supposed to fix a problem when he doesn't know what the problem even is?

He sighs and lets his sponge drop on the wet tile so that he can crawl on his knees to the edge of the partition and actually look at Bucky.

"You don't want to tell me what it is?" It's possible that Steve is at least a little aware that he's got a kicked puppy look on his face. He's not trying to be manipulative, but he can't really help wearing his heart on his sleeve like this. It goes down to his very core.

It's on his lips to say hell no, all the way up until Steve's head pops around the corner and he pins him with this look that Barnes takes like a punch straight to the gut. It leaves him with a wrinkled forehead and parted lips, words dying in his throat, hand gripping a scrub brush just a little too tightly.

He's been avoiding Steve's face for so many days in a row, having it suddenly there looking half beat-up over this is just...

God.

He sighs, ripping his eyes away, pinning them onto the floor. A beat later, he shifts from hands and knees to siting up on his thighs, carding damp fingers through his hair.

"You ever heard of GFTS? Gay for the stay?" Which is one hell of a way to start this conversation, but here goes nothing.

Not the line of thought Steve had been expecting and while he's pretty confident he can take care of himself, it has him a little worried that he's somehow outed himself in the last few days.

Except that Bucky doesn't look angry or even disgusted with Steve. Steve isn't sure what he looks like, though.

"No, but I can take a guess at it."

His own posture shifts as he watches Bucky carefully. Anyone outside of their little group and he'd be getting himself into a more defensive stance, but he can't bring himself to expect some sort of attack from Bucky here, especially not with Bucky looking like that. Instead, he sits back on his heels. Settled. If someone jumped him now, they'd have a decent advantage, but he doesn't think that matters with Bucky. They live in a cell together. If Bucky was going to hurt him, he would have done it by now.

Not exactly a hard phrase to figure out given the context, so Barnes gives him a nod. It's exactly what it sounds like. Men who bat for the other team during their duration, and then once they're out it's like it never even happened.

"It means nothing in here's real. Even if-" even if you're interested in men out there too, odds are you're only interested in your prison pal for the duration of the stay, too. He can't even begin to hazard a guess as to where Steve falls on the spectrum. He thinks there's a scale for it, he's heard that once or twice, that people slide up and down that scale depending on circumstance. He's been burned before trying to pin someone down, so he's given up on the notion.

His throat closes up midway through the sentence and he tugs his eyes away again, settling them on the far wall, a spot of soap that seems to have dried and has started flaking. He shakes his head. "I know that. I've seen it. I've been here two years, three months, five days."

And if he had a watch on, he'd list off the hours and minutes if he could, too.

"I've seen people who... think it's any different than that. I'm just having a hard time reminding myself that."

Carefully, deliberately spoken to leave out any direct implication that it's Steve. Maybe he's hiding from everyone. Maybe he's hiding from the whole damn world. Maybe Steve's just caught up in the crossfire of it.

...Or maybe it's obvious as all hell, it's not exactly a hard conclusion to puzzle out, and he'll stare at that soap spot all damn day long before he looks Steve in the face.

Or better yet, he'll drop back down and start scrubbing the tile with rigor. Fuck this tile.

Steve isn't the best at these things, either matters of the heart or noticing when someone is into him, so while he has an inkling of what this is, he's really not entirely sure enough to call Bucky on it. Instead, he listens and considers everything Bucky is saying and when he answers, it's carefully neutral.

"Things like that happened a lot overseas, too." Maybe they hadn't been quite as segregated away from women, but they'd still been isolated enough that a man who might not normally be receptive to that sort of connection with another man might form one, anyway. He thinks it's just human nature to crave that to some degree, regardless of sexuality or how a person views themselves.

"But, Bucky, just because something is temporary doesn't make it less real." After all, most things are temporary, aren't they? Steve hasn't had much permanence in his life in a long time, but it's important to let himself have what he can.

Besides, whatever's got Bucky looking like that? Steve wants to fix it. So he sits there and watches Bucky scrub.

Steve's got a point, and going from zero to sixty after a week in solitary is a little extreme. Assuming whatever he's got is real is god damn naive, assuming anything would last (in here or out there) for any length of time just based on what he knows of Steve is far and away miles different from his normal pragmatism.

It's a strong enough point that it gets him to look at Steve again, a searching look that flickers over his features, takes in his eyes, his lips, considers his words.

Feels a resounding tightening in his chest.

There's a voice in his head that sounds a hell of a lot like he did at twenty, chasing tail, telling him to make a move. Have some temporary fun. Pass the time anyway, right, and deal with the fallout when it comes.

His gut, though, says if he starts in on something like this it's gonna get a hell of a lot bigger and a hell of a lot stronger than he can justify based on just the short amount of time they've known each other.

Too much in common. Too fiercely loyal. Too many coincidences. He hasn't been the same in relationships since he got back. He doesn't do casual anymore, not so much, and even if he wanted to Steve's in the god damn bunk beneath him. What a break-up that would be.

Do it, don't do it, do it, don't do it. The decision ping-pongs back and forth in his head so many times it practically generates heat, and before he can clamp down on his own goddamn tongue he blurts out an annoyed-sounding, "Are you even gay?"

Which is not:
The best way
The right terms
The most tactful

Once he gets over his surprise, Steve considers his answer carefully. Living on the down-low isn't exactly his favorite way to be. He likes being honest and open, but he'd learned the hard way that that can put a man's life in danger if he isn't careful with it. He's been lucky enough to have periods in his life to have the freedom to be relatively safe in his honesty, but he's also been in situations where being out could cost him his life.

Prison likely being one of those.

Keep your mouth shut and lie. It's a mantra that he hates and it tears at him, because Steve hates being a liar. He hates hiding something like this, because it is important and it does inform at least some of who he is and who he's become.

But the thing is that until Bucky had gone all cold on him, he'd thought Bucky really had been the kind of man Steve would want to be around voluntarily.

The sort of man Steve would want to be honest with.

He takes too long to answer, of course, eyes never leaving Bucky's face. The silence probably says as much before he even gets around to admitting it.

"Yes." He resists the urge to tack on some plea for secrecy. Either Bucky cares enough to know that it should remain between them or he doesn't care enough to keep Steve's secrets, anyway.

It takes him such a long time to answer, at first Bucky's afraid he's pulled on strings too sore to be pulled. He's not exactly streaming rainbows from the rafters, but he's been comfortable with himself long enough that dropping the hard G word doesn't phase him so much. He's had a few fistfights for it, but more or less it leaves him so comfortable in his own skin he forgets to be sensitive about the skin of others.

So he doesn't break eye contact, tries his best to school is features into something that suggests he'll take an answer either way and not give Steve hell for it, and isn't disappointed by when he gets it.

With it comes a subtle rush of relief and, right behind it, guilt. Why the hell was it any of his god damn business anyway, and why the hell would he let it come rushing out of his mouth like that? Top that off with a dash of "just because he's interested in men doesn't mean he's interested in you," and it's got him pressing his lips together tight.

Slowly, inscrutably, carefully, he nods.

...and goes back to scrubbing, because it's about ten times easier than this conversation or looking Steve Rogers in the eyes.

Christ Almighty, can it be lights out already? Can he go back in time and un-have this conversation? If he were the type to imagine an ideal scenario for how this talk came about, he doesn't think a single bit of it has happened so far here.

He watches Bucky for another moment before he sighs and goes back to his own scrubbing. They do need to get this done, whether they want to talk or not and he's not sure that Bucky really wants to talk.

His hands feel cold and waterlogged as he grabs his sponge again, searching for the right words, because as much as he wants to say something, he's still not sure what Bucky is trying to tell him. Or not tell him.

As far as he can tell, Bucky seems to be having some kind of gay crisis and Steve's seen it before, but he doesn't know what you say to a man who's thinking he might be less straight or that his experiences should make him less straight or whatever it is that Bucky's worried about. How do you console a man because he thinks he might be a little like you?

Or maybe he's totally off base. Maybe Bucky's just noticed the way Steve looks at him.

"Buck, whatever this is, it doesn't have to change anything."

Oh, boy, is he not good at whatever this is.

He's been accused of being moody by more than one partner and friend in the past. It goes a little something like this:

He gets caught up in his own head. Starts thinking about things too much. Starts coming at it from too many angles, trying to strategically tackle it. The more angles he goes at it, the bigger it gets in his head until it's almost too much to face. He doesn't run from his problems until he does, and when he does he runs hard.

He knows he does it, it's just hard to catch himself in the act sometimes until afterwards. A few seconds of silent scrubbing after Steve's statement, and then he stops. Does his best to plaster on a tight smile, with an arguable degree of success. A little too flat, a little too tight in the corners, but it's a start.

"You're right," He agrees, sounding a touch tired. A beat passes, he shrugs a shoulder, and tacks on a soft, "Sorry."

He'll get over it. Doesn't have to be the end of the world. Doesn't have to be bigger than what it is. They'll finish this, he'll slip back into the fold like he was never missing, and he'll deal with shit as it comes. It'll just... take a while for the awkwardness to fade out and to get a handle on internalizing what he can reason out to be just a big, fat crush.

And to prove his point (because the expression and the words on their own are weak, he gets that) he points his brush to some nebulous space in Steve's area and comments, "You missed a spot."

Which will have to be good enough, because it's all he's got in him at the moment.

Steve focuses on his scrubbing, not sure how much he's really helped this situation, but it's not like he could make it much worse. It's silly to pin so much on another person, anyway, but for a few days, he'd thought maybe he'd found a friend and not just some passable company while he's stuck on the inside. A friend.

For all his honesty, though, Steve's never been very good at wearing his heart on his sleeve. Honesty about facts are one thing and talking about feelings are a whole other and maybe those are still best left unsaid, even between friends.

Bucky's words get his attention back in the present, but there's no spot and he glances back at Bucky in confusion for about two seconds before he catches on.

"Jerk." He laughs and splashes some soapy water at Bucky. Their knees are already wet, anyway, and the shower will wash away whatever mess that might make. "Don't try to make this job more tedious than it already is."

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